Tweaking the text

Like most creatives, when I am making something I find it hard to think about what I will do with it when it's done. If you're a painter, part of the decision is made for you: it's got to go on a wall, ideally a wall where people can see it. A website with thumbnail images is a modern-day extension of that wall; but usually people actually have to get intimate with the painting, close enough to smell it, before they can decide to buy it.

Not that painters paint primarily to sell--they paint because they must. But it sure is convenient to sell a few works, both to get the means to buy more high-quality ultramarine blue (made of ground-up semi-precious stones from Afghanistan, dontcha know) and because the artist's house only has a finite amount of wall to hang paintings on.

I write because I must (although I manage to resist the mustness of it for long stretches), and I almost never know when I start writing what I can possibly do with the new play or screenplay once it is done. The idea snugged down over my brain is to get it done--to find out what happens next, and next, and next until the conclusion happens.

I'm fortunate because my characters generally take over the script within the first few pages and improve whatever half-baked idea I started with. Sometimes I can't wait to get typing to find out what they say and do next; sometimes I dread the keyboard because of what they may say or do next.

But that's the creating part. This morning I am pondering a wrinkle in the process of getting works out before the world: tweaking a text for a specific market.

There's this little play I wrote about two people who meet on the "quiet car" of a commuter train. I was near Boston when I wrote this and a daily commuter (See Mayor of the commuter car). So it was obvious to me and to the folks who did a table reading of the script what a quiet car is and what might happen in one.

But now I'm thinking of submitting this play to a contest in a more rural part of North America. I'm not sure if they even have commuter trains there. Do I insert a little explainer at the start of the play; and, if so, how? Does one of the characters turn to the audience and do a David Attenborough whisper-voice ("We have just left the quiet car, one of a rare breed of rolling stock that migrates in urban environments")?

Similarly, I have a play where a character talks of going off to Alberta to seek his fortune. Perfectly clear, and possibly poignant, to any Canadian audience. But is it going to be clear at all to the readers for this contest in Texas, or for this one in West Virginia?

Mind you, this is a good problem: the plays I have mentioned are complete, make sense, and will eventually find their audience. But I am still puzzled by how much I need to torture their details in order to get productions for them.